Virginia Wood sellers expect demand, price to increase

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Dec 16, 2000 - 12:21 AM

By Shannon Brennan The News & Advance

Eddie Newman loads half a cord of wood into the bed of his pickup truck Friday at the Greenview Nursery on Leesville Road. The early cold snap has increased the demand for and price of wood. By Doug Koontz

Sales of firewood and wood stoves are brisk in Central Virginia, fueled by cold weather and high natural gas and heating oil prices.

"I've probably already sold 75 cords more than what I've been selling by this time," said Addison Johnston, who is a timber cutter by trade. "It's double from last year."

His customers give a variety of reasons for wanting wood: they fear a hard winter and want it for backup; they're switching to wood as a main heat source; or they don't like the rising price of gas and oil.

Johnston, who lives in Roseland, sells a lot of wood to condominium owners at Wintergreen and even homeowners on Rivermont Avenue in Lynchburg. He went up $5 a cord this year because of his delivery costs. He sells a cord for between $100 and $140, depending on delivery distance. All his wood his seasoned oak, considered the best for burning.

Wade Adams of Appomattox has gotten double the number of calls from ads he runs in local newspapers for firewood. He has almost sold out of the 20 half-cord loads he cut from his property this year.

"I expect the demand for it is going to be real high down the road," he said.

Residential customers nationally are paying 44 percent more for natural gas this winter than last, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Wholesale gas prices this week soared to an all-time high of $9.539 per thousand cubic feet on the New York market.

Energy officials say natural gas and heating oil prices will remain high through the winter because of low supplies and colder temperatures.

The result is mushrooming costs for home heating bills and a renewed interest in wood as a cheaper alternative.

Local wood stove dealers are reaping the benefits.

Aqua Pros Pools has seen a 25 percent increase in sales of wood stoves this fall at stores in Lynchburg, Bedford and Madison Heights, said Greg Littlefield, a salesman in Lynchburg. Their stores sell Vermont Casting wood stoves, which range in price from $1,000 to $2,200.

"Most people are shifting to a more efficient stove," he said.

Littlefield said most of their customers have been burning wood for years and have their own suppliers.

Many people, like Adams, sell wood on the side to earn a few extra dollars. But Adams, who sells oak for $30 for half a cord, said he doesn't make much money, especially when you consider how much time it takes to cut and split wood. He's mainly in it for the exercise.

"There are less and less people fooling with it … and I can understand why," he said.

Adams said his customers are telling him they are having a harder time finding firewood, but George Kinzie, owner of Greenview Nursery on Leesville Road in Campbell County, said supply is not a problem.

"The market seems to be kind of glutted with wood," he said.

Kinzie has been selling wood since 1986 and he currently has three suppliers. A cord of wood, which is a 4-by-4-by-8-foot stack, goes for between $80 and $120, depending on the mix and how seasoned it is.

Kinzie doesn't deliver. His price hasn't gone up from last year, he said, but if the weather stays cold, demand may drive prices up.

"It's been colder than usual earlier," he said. "Weather is the main thing. I don't think it's the fuel cost."

Martha Warring, a forester with the Virginia Forestry Department in Amherst, said supply in Central Virginia should not be a problem.

"There's plenty of private woods," she said.

In some parts of the country, particularly out west, the majority of forests are government owned, making it difficult to find firewood. But in Amherst County, for example, only 25 percent is on local, state or national land.

Warring said most people who sell firewood do it part-time to supplement their income and most people who buy it find a supplier by word-of-mouth.

Alternate energy sources like wood became popular following the energy crisis of the 1970s. Georgia's Forestry Commission, for instance, put wood stoves in many of its county offices. Some industries, such as pulp mills and large sawmills, still use wood to generate steam and electricity.

"People used a tremendous amount of wood from the early to mid-'80s, then shifted away as other fuels became lower priced and the shock of the oil crisis faded from people's memories," said Tommy Loggins, of the Georgia Forestry Commission.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

This story can be found at : http://www.newsadvance.com/MGBFR77VSGC.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 16, 2000


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